Archive for the ‘Infrastructure’ Category

We've often noted that the biggest hurdle for electric vehicles to overcome is the energy and recharging infrastructure. (In fact, that was listed among the most significant obstacles facing the MINI E just last week.) Now, a sprawling coalition of business leaders -- including Nissan's outspoken CEO, Carlos Ghosn -- have announced an aggressive plan to address  such problems and speed America down the EV highway. Called the "Electrification Roadmap", the plan calls for EVs to make up 75% of all light-duty traffic by the year 2040. Central to the plan's strategy is the development of "electrification ecosystems" in key cities (rather than...

One of the great things about our job is that we get to read all about cars. And, often, some of the peripheral topics too. Like bridges.

In fact, we get to read things like Better Roads magazine, which serves "governments and construction contractors involved in...highway, road and bridge construction, winter maintenance, roadside and vegetation management and other highway-related projects." Vegetation management, woohoo!

The magazine has just released its annual survey of America's bridges. And the news is, errrr, not good.

A "shockingly high number"--25.7 percent--of America's 598,000 bridges are  either structurally deficient or...

Wireless charging has become fairly commonplace for cell phones and other handheld devices (even backpacks can do it), and now, that same technology may be coming to the aid of EVs. A German outfit called Ingenieurgesellschaft Auto und Verkehr has a patent for an electromagnetic induction system that would sit beneath roadway surfaces and charge EV batteries as cars pass above. The company is running prototypes now and hopes to make a product commercially available within three years. The concept is pretty straightforward, but there's a video (in German) on the company site if you got nothing better to do a Thursday. [Gas2.0]